Tuesday, 22 November 2011

British Gas Pools for Schools Initiative

Today marks the beginning of a competition brought to you by British Gas to highlight their Pools For Schools initiative.

If you haven't yet heard of this fantastic scheme, British Gas are providing temporary swimming facilities for schools in areas of "aquatic deprivation". So far this scheme has helped over 10,000 children swim ten metres unaided.

This is a fantastic scheme. As a mother of three young children of primary school age, I was concerned to find that my children only get one term of swimming lessons in total. One term? And some schools don't even get that.

I was lucky, where I attended primary school we had a small indoor pool on site. If they hadn't have had this facility, I wouldn't have learnt to swim.

One in five children are unable to swim at all by the time they leave Primary school, I find this a really sad fact. I have great memories as a child having weekly swimming lessons throughout my primary school life and the thought that my children won't get the same experience due to cutbacks and money saving is quite awful.

Shouldn't all children be given the opportunity to learn how to swim at Primary school level? I think so, and so does British Gas.

So to raise awareness of this great initiative, British Gas have launched a brand new competition

Flip Flop Flip

British Gas are giving the British public the chance to win prizes by taking part in a ‘flip flop lottery’ on their Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/britishgas By registering your details you’ll be allocated a number at random (from 1-1000) which matches to a flip flop. On the 10th of December all 1000 flip flops will be thrown into a pool in Birmingham and members of the British Gas BGR swim team will be diving in and pulling up random flip flops, If they bring up your flip flop then you are a winner. Prizes can include signed merchandise, tickets to watch the Swimming championships and much much more.

2 comments

I had countless swimming lessons at the beach when primary school aged in Albany (south coast of Western Australia, with summers not much warmer than the UK). Didn't get me very far at all. It wasn't until my family moved 250 miles to the north and rented a house with a swimming pool that I made much progress.

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